Rick Santorum Gay Parents

Yesterday at a campaign stop in South Carolina, a woman who’s the mother of a gay son asked Rick Santorum to help her resolve the guilt she feels about supporting him. Her guilt, of course, stems from the fact that Rick Santorum has not been a friend to the gay community, to put it mildly. And the gays haven’t exactly been mum about their feelings on Santorum either. But what if all this hate between the two sides was just a terrible misunderstanding? It is, if you believe the answers that Rick and his wife Karen gave to the mom’s question. It turns out Santorum is nothing but a big ol’ sweater-vested bag of love for the gays—if you see wanting them to deny equal rights and equating their relationships to polygamy as a sign of affection, that is.

Santorum has faced increasingly strenuous questions about his position on gay marriage since his campaign kicked into high gear, but the questioning he faced yesterday was not exactly of the hard-hitting variety. The mother started out by saying she’s supported Santorum since the beginning, and then she came out with this:

My youngest son is gay. I debated for the longest time how to handle my support of you because what he’s been hearing is “Oh, Rick Santorum hates gays.” Interestingly enough, we had a short conversation and he said, “Well, actually, I don’t have any problems with his stance on gay marriage because I don’t believe in gay marriage.” But I still have that sense of guilt because his friends react to what they hear. Help me. How do I deal with that?

Jesus, there are a whole lot of conflicted feelings going on all over the place here. Help her, Rick! Help us all! But, in fact, it’s his wife Karen who jumps in to offer her interesting take on the situation:

As Rick’s wife, I have known and loved him for 23 years and I think it’s very sad what the gay activists have done out there. They’ve vilified him, and it’s so wrong. Rick does not hate anyone. He loves them. What he has simply said is marriage shouldn’t happen.

Ohhh, well why didn’t you just say that from the start, Kare-Bear? Actually, we really should have been able to figure it out ourselves, because nothing says “I love you” like telling someone that they shouldn’t have the same rights as other people and that were they to fall in love and have children, it would endanger the future of our nation. It’s kind of like how the founders of our country didn’t give black people and women the right to vote because they loved us so much that they knew they had to protect us from ourselves!